There was the quarrel and his shrugged-off wife
(whose hurt heart turned, perhaps, in time to stone) –
the opportunity to shape his life
as he would wish, decisively alone.
There was success, the mountebank who made
the fictions of his inwardness come true,
and there were other loves for which he paid
with loathing for the new self he now knew.
There was regret, the image of a child
that he had lost, that time could not restore;
there was the hunger to be reconciled.
Stratford again – and there, his own front door.
The statue moved and, gently, she descended,
and all the mighty fictions were now ended.